Tuesday, 20 October 2015

Data15 - Tableau Opening Keynote

It’s that time folks. Christian, Chris and the Devs are about to take the stage in the MGM arena where Tyson and the Stones have starred. Big expectations! I’ll blog summaries of all the sessions that I go to if you can’t make it (or can’t remember them due to your Vegas excesses). This is a stream of consciousness so apologies for the spelling mistakes and typos in advance.

Christian Chabot (CC)

8th annual customer conference

CC highlights the customer examples where the impacts of visualisations done everyday is making the world a better place through improving medicine, monitoring manta ray movement or childcare in local councils (Leicestershire County Council example).

Data is still growing and to help people everyone needs to become a ‘data person’.

La Nacion – “people don’t believe our journalists by what they write. They believe it because they can analyse the data themselves” all using Tableau. Showing the example that data is a way to empower people. “It’s not the people in power, it the power in the people that will change South America”.

Francois Ajenstat (FA)

“Tableau helps me be creative, even though I‘m not a creative person” – Ben at a retailer

This is the kick for the devs to keep making the software better

People who know the data should ask the questions – everyday people.

Software should be designed for deeper thinking – simple design shouldn’t mean simplistic.

Analytics at can drive change – data led collaboration can only exist when the software fits the culture of the company it is used in

More to be invested in R&D in the last 2 years than in the last 10

Developers on Stage is back!!

Areas of investment:

Data

Formatted spreadsheets with multiple tables in the sheet can now split out these tables using the Data Interpretor automatically

Date Wrangling - Tableau Public showed over 250 different were in use. More automatic data / time coversion as Tableau becomes more intelligent. Just change the data type to a ‘date’ or ‘date / time’ and Tableau converts funky formats

Union is here!!! Hover over the second data item over the first in the data preparation screen and new rows are added. Wildcard file names allows you to union lots of files all in a couple of clicks.

Cross Database Joins – Adding connections all in the data preparation screen, goodbye blending. Row level, live querying across multiple databases. Publishing the cross database joins can be published to the server

Visualisation

Tables – Highlight tables with totals are dominated by totals. Now able to unclick ‘show totals’ in the colour dialogue box. Totals can be moved from bottom to the top row, from the right side to the left side of the table.

Interactivity – Data Highlighter – on the marks card, drop the data field on the marks card and select ‘highlight selected’ and as you search the view changed on each letter to update the scatterplot. Add a data item to the ‘Data Highlighter’ and you can hover through a list and the screen will show the update as you go

Custom Territories – similar to using grouping but finds the outside of the mapping polygons as one shape.

Spatial data – New data connection group – ‘Spatial File’. New field type – ‘Geometry’ that loads as custom polygons on your map.

Mapbox integration – add Mapbox maps in just a few click. Can add custom layers to your maps.

Inserting charts in to Tooltips – in just a couple of clicks.

Analytics

Outlier Detection – Select multiple fields, right click and Create ‘Outlier Set’. Simply use as you would normal sets

Clustering – in analytics pane and drop it on the viz. Tableau works out the clustering and have even shown the cluster outliers. A group is created to capture the results of the cluster. Can drop additional metrics in to the clustering algorithm.

Drag and drop analytics – drag the reference band to colour and drop it to change the colours of the marks only with the reference band. Can drag reference lines to filters to filter up to that point

Self-service at Scale (to make all companies data driven)

New home page for every single user on Tableau Server. Collects your favourites and most visited views

Content Analytics – hover over the content you are interested in and it shows the consumption rates. Bar charts show content views etc

Server search – Thumbnails in the search. Results are ordered by views

Version Control in Tableau Server. Click on history and select the old version and it gets moved across. Tableau Server making it safe to change your mind

Permissions at the Project level – can manage permission at the project, workbook or data source owners. Project permissions can locked by the owner